This ‘Director’s Festival’ recital brought together
two of William Lyne’s favourite artists in an established partnership
which, nevertheless, managed to convey fresh insights. I don’t think
any apology is needed for beginning with the pianist on this occasion,
since Schiff’s playing of the Impromptus provided as perfect a Schubertian
experience as his deeply sympathetic accompanying: the programming may
have seemed a little strange in that the first half was necessarily
short and the interval truncated (allowing the hall’s unflappable stage
manager to add yet another gem to his trove of admonitions – ‘Ladies,
whatever it is you do in there, please do it quickly’ his previous gems
including the immortal ‘If you should feel the urge to cough { long
pause} – don’t.’ ) but such was the poetic quality of the playing that
no one minded, and no one felt it an imposition to have to wait for
the evening’s central work and artist. No matter how often one has tortured,
and been tortured by them in those dreaded piano exams, the Impromptus
triumph over familiarity in performances such as the one Schiff gave
us, with the lovely second, in A flat major, played with such tenderness
and natural ease that I wanted to hear it again, at once.

Schiff provided the most powerful musical pleasure
in ‘Die schöne Müllerin,’ his sensitivity and deep understanding
of the music so poignantly clear in each song, and his collaborative
quality so much needed and so expertly given to the singer. It would
be simply silly to attempt to pretend that Schreier’s voice is anything
but threadbare in tone these days, although I’d be willing to bet that
there are plenty of ladies of a certain age who would try to do so:
intrinsic beauty of tone has never been his speciality anyway (amazing
to read in the notes that he has been praised firstly for ‘the beauty
of his voice’) and one hardly expects mellifluousness from any singer
in his sixty-eighth year: but then, one hardly expects an interpretation
of freshness and originality either, nor does one dare to hope that
a singer so eminent and so lauded can have learned so much from younger
practitioners of his art that his performance is a completely modern
one – and yet that was what we got, and more.

What I loved most about Schreier’s singing, and Schiff’s
playing here, was that they did not go in for any of that ‘Austrian
gemütlichkeit’ stuff which seems to be the only way some people,
both performers and critics, can cope with this cycle. Gemütlichkeit
is fine, I have no problem with it in its place, but it has no place
in a cycle which ends, not with the protagonist striding on (as in ‘Winterreise’)
but with the self-destruction of his body in the stream that has been
part of his livelihood, some eight songs after the destruction of his
emotional self. Schreier and Schiff understood this perfectly, and their
interpretation was never hearty, never merely delightful, and never
cloyingly sweet. Even in ‘Das Wandern,’ we are not in the world of a
carefree youth bounding along towards a bucolic sunset but a troubled
man who senses that his approach to life is not to be a comfortable
one. In this song, as in ‘Der Jäger,’ Schreier lost his line but
was saved both times by Schiff, heroically so in the latter, so much
so that one barely registered that mistakes had been made.

Schreier’s renowned sensitivity to words was evident
throughout: in ‘Wohin’ he may have over-emphasised ‘Das kann kein Rauschen
sein’ but he more than made up for that with as subtle a final stanza
as could be desired, and ‘Am Feierabend’ was a model of careful depiction
of feeling, with a sense of real frustration breaking out at ‘Jede Knappe
tut mir’s nach’ and just enough pressure on ‘Allen’ in the last line
to remind you of the speaker’s forlorn realization that he has not been
singled out by the ‘liebe Mädchen.’ ‘Der Neugierige’ was perfection,
the hesitant, delicate vorspiel so lovingly recreating the tentative
questioning of the youth and ‘Die ganze Welt’ so finely phrased.

It was ‘Mein!’ and ‘Pause’ which really marked this
out as a special interpretation, with the former no mere exultation
in an entirely illusory possession but the effusion of a troubled and
deceived individual, and the latter completely understood as the turning
point of the whole cycle, with Schiff’s playing so wonderfully suggestive
of the lute. Schreier takes a similar view of ‘Mit dem grünen Lautenbande’
to that of Goerne, which is to say that this is not a merry little ditty
but a slightly sinister depiction of the would-be lover’s feelings,
and both singer and pianist had understood that such lines as ‘Dann
hab ich’s Grün erst gern!’ are ironic rather than playful.

‘Trockne Blumen’ showed a masterly sense of the subtleties
of Müller’s lines and Schubert’s setting of them: Schreier managed
to move us deeply with ‘Ach, Tränen machen / Nicht maiengrün,/
Machen tote Liebe/ Nicht wieder blühn’ yet never descended into
mawkishness. The final ‘lullaby’ was as bittersweet as could be desired
– this was no cradle song but a heartbreaking farewell to lost hopes
and potential, marred only by the inexplicable noisy watch-winding of
a lady behind me, a jarring noise which also interrupted the entirely
appropriate silence which concluded this remarkable recital.